Joe Conason: A Green ‘New Deal’ Now

[marmar]

from truthdig:



A Green ‘New Deal’ Now

Posted on Jun 16, 2010
By Joe Conason


If the right-wing chorus insists that the Deepwater Horizon blowout in the Gulf of Mexico is “Obama’s Katrina,” then let us hope the president will make the most of that slogan. The comparison between the utter failure of the Bush administration and the missteps and errors of the Obama White House is fundamentally false. Yet there is nevertheless a crucial parallel to be drawn as the fifth anniversary of the hurricane approaches.

As Eric Pooley observes in “The Climate War: True Believers, Power Brokers and the Fight to Save the Earth,” his fascinating new book about America’s struggle over global warming, Katrina brought attention to the problem after a decade or so of oblivion. Although the ruinous storm wasn’t “caused” by rising average temperatures, it was precisely the kind of devastating weather event that will become much more likely on a hotter planet.

In Katrina’s wake, most Americans seemed to comprehend that ominous fact, which in turn helped them hear the warning voiced by former Vice President Al Gore when his documentary film, “An Inconvenient Truth,” was released in May 2006. “The climate issue attention-cycle peaked in early 2007,” Pooley writes, just after Gore won the Nobel Peace Prize, “when a New York Times poll found that an overwhelming majority of those surveyed—90 percent of Democrats, 80 percent of independents, 60 percent of Republicans—favored ‘immediate action’ to confront the crisis. ...”

Still, climate action has never become a top priority for Americans as it has for Europeans and others around the world. Political lassitude encouraged by corporate propaganda and persistent unemployment has kept climate legislation stalled on Capitol Hill, even though a somewhat compromised bill authored by two Democratic representatives, Henry Waxman of California and Ed Markey of Massachusetts, passed the House last year. ............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/a_green_new_deal_now_20100616/

[Ken Burch]

1. Absolutely.

The "market" can't help us here.

We need interventionism, and democratic decision-making in this process.

This is a moment when we need to remake this country.